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Sean Ahern
United States
Spokane
Washington
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I'm not the world's fastest writer. I have a tendancy to write something, then go back and erase it, write something different, then think better of it and pretty much just rewriting what I had before. Also, my improvised descriptions of places are usually pretty boring and uninspired. That's a pretty bad combination that leaves me spending a lot of time on game prep.
So, I was pretty happy to see that Wizards of the Coast was releasing Hammerfast, a new kind of source material they call an "Adventure Site". Aimed at the heroic tier, it's similar to Chapter 11 of the DMG, which described the town of Fallcrest. Both provide a DM with locations, NPCs, encounters, and hooks, but Hammerfast steps it up a notch. So what sort of place is Hammerfast? It's a reclaimed dwarven necropolis where the living share the streets with ghosts and you walk past two sealed tombs on your way to work. On top of that, a deity enforced peace exists between the dwarven residents and marauding orcs who now make Hammerfast their home. All in all, it sounded like a cool place to start an adventure!
(Quick note, this review is based on a read through, it has not seen play. That being said, Hammerfast is mostly a fluff and idea sparker, so I think a read only review will still be informative).
Contents:
The whole package is enclosed in a nice little sleeve. On the inside cover of the sleeve, you'll find two black and white maps: a miniature map of the city and a hex-based map of the surrounding area. The city map is unlabeled except for ward names and I plan to make copies and hand it out to my players. The surrounding area map is labeled with perhaps too much detail. "Dungeon of the Fire Opal" and "Stravalla's Tower" seem to be the only spoilers however. I guess you either photoshop them out or don't worry about it.
A double sided map is included. One side of the map is a larger colored version of the town, completely unlabeled, 20' to a square. My favorite feature are the little ballistas in the towers. On the other side is a 5' to a square battlemat depicting The Foundation Stone, "the most popular tavern in Hammerfast". The map is split in two, with the main floor on one side and the mezzanine level on the other side. It's a generic tavern except for a 3 by 3 pit in the middle of the main floor (explained in the booklet) that you could easily cover up and use as any tavern. It's a pretty nice map, useful in lots of situations.
The booklet is 32 durable pages long and completely black and white. The book is mostly text with only 5 half page maps and 5 quarter page illustrations (recycled images). About half the booklet is taken up describing locations in and around Hammerfast in a point by point fashion. The rest is a mix of overview, personalities, organizations, quests, and creatures. You won't find any detailed encounters or lots of new magic items (I count only one).
The Bad:
Nothing is really bad in this product. The writing, layout, art, materials, and editing are all up to the quality you would expect from Wizards. It's obviously not a major release, but even a low profile product like this is better than most RPG items in terms of production values.
The Meh:
What I want in my D&D material is a heavy dose of high fantasy. At first glance, Hammerfast seems to have this in spades. It's a dwarven city that used to be a necropolis, for Pelor's sake! You've got ghosts wandering the streets of the town and the townsfolk don't think twice about it. And to top it off, you've got a deity enforced peace between dwarves and the blood-thirsty orcs who last decade had been sacking the place.
But the high fantasy turns somewhat mundane rather quickly. The town layout is pretty unimaginative; a lot of the buildings are old tombs but look just like regular buildings. I'd think that a dwarven necropolis would look a lot different than Anytown, Greyhawk. It's flat and feels rather undwarven. I'd change it but that would make a lot of what makes Hammerfast a good product (the included maps, the detailed locations) much more difficult to utilize.
Perhaps the greatest disappointment is that the most interesting thing about Hammerfast, the cohabitation of the living and the dead, is barely exploited at all. With only a few ghost NPCs and none of them earning more than a few sentences worth of description, the ghosts are only background dressing to the other plots. I thought the ghost angle was the most interesting element of Hammerfast and was disappointed not to see more column space devouted to it.
Three big bads are given some extra attention: bandits, fundamentalists, and a dragon. The bandits and the dragon are your standard D&D variety and don't enhance the setting. The fundamentalists, on the other hand, are interesting, complex, and do make the setting richer. They'll certainly play a big part in any adventures I run in Hammerfast.
The Good:
Hook City baby, Hook City. Every location is outlined and practically everything has some interesting adventure seed: cursed Eladrins, outcast shadar-kai, smuggling halflings, ghost orc lumberjacks. The city really does feel like there's a story under every rock. Some of these lead to the more overarching quests, some of them stand on their own. Because of this, Hammerfast feels like it has a life outside of what the players are doing. This is not something I can do easily on my own as a DM, but this book makes it easy.
On top of the minor hooks that are integrated into the city description, nine major quests are outlined, one for each level 2 through 10. Each one is a couple paragraphs long and build on the events of the previous level. However, with a few tweaks, the story could certainly start in the middle. Each of these nine major quests involve villians that are described in greater detail in their own section. And just to finish things off, the backpage of the booklet ends with eight stand alone ideas. All in all, there must be 80 adventure ideas spread throughout the book and just about all of them sparked my imagination.
Finally, most of the city is detailed; of the ~100 buildings on the map, 50 of them are named and described. It's not like they described part of the city and left the rest open, it's all pretty much described. You won't be caught without an answer when a player asks, "what's behind this door?" You've also got a great map of the city that you can lay out in front of them. Gotta love visual aids!
All the NPCs have names and a bit of background. There's no generic "Grumpy Innkeep" or "Dimwitted Guard". They've got backstory, hell, some of them have more backstory than some characters I've played. Again, this all contributes to Hammerfast feeling like a living breathing city.
Summary:
Hammerfast succeeds as a framework for your adventures. It provides the setting details so you can worry about the story. I think it does a great job at that. Also, there are lots of good ideas for adventures. It will spark lots of quest ideas in your head as you imagine how you're going to play out a scene as you read about it. Where it falls short is in taking advantage of this really cool setting that someone came up with. Where are the major plots that deal with the fact you're living in a haunted city!? That's what I want to explore and Hammerfast leaves you hanging. The orcs living next door are cool and all but I want more ghosts!
Overall, do I recommend this product? Yes, at $14.95 MSRP it's a great bargain. The battlemat and city map alone are probably worth $8 and by my estimation that leaves about 10 cents per adventure idea. And you know what? So what if it doesn't describe some great ghost uprising or the reason the ghosts are around? I can thank Mike Mearls for taking the boring part of writing an adventure, making those dull parts interesting, and allowing me to focus on the fun stuff. I may still be a slow writer, but at least now I'm writing slowly about a ghost that only the children of Hammerfast can see instead of some boring old inn and I'm having more fun.
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Nice review. The simultaneous release of not one, but two, reviews of Hammerfast is very cool but probably means your review hasn't gotten quite the attention it deserves.
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DMSamuel
United States
Ithaca
New York
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MJ Harnish wrote: Nice review. The simultaneous release of not one, but two, reviews of Hammerfast is very cool but probably means your review hasn't gotten quite the attention it deserves.
I Agree.
What I find interesting is that our reviews basically agree on most points, but we have different points of view that affect the way we see Hammerfast. It's really interesting to me to see both reviews at the same time.
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Sean Ahern
United States
Spokane
Washington
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MJ Harnish wrote: Nice review. The simultaneous release of not one, but two, reviews of Hammerfast is very cool but probably means your review hasn't gotten quite the attention it deserves.
I'm just glad that I stayed up late to finish it. If Sam's had already been around, I wouldn't have had quite the incentive to finish it. That first paragraph applies to review writing as well as game prep.
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DMSamuel
United States
Ithaca
New York
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You do bring up a good point that I neglected to talk about - the lack of ghosts in the setting. They make a large deal out of the ghosts as part of the history and intrigue in Hammerfast, they even put one on the cover! But then they sort-of drop the ball by focusing on the living.
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Merric Blackman
Australia
Waubra
Victoria
Ramping up my reviewing.
Happily playing games for many, many years.
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That's a fantastic review. Thank you very much for writing it!
Cheers,
Merric
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